The glass walls made it possible to see everything at once. As Paul walked he looked to one room, and behind it was another, and another … they seemed to go on to infinity, making the onlooker dizzy. Some were filled with computers, others with sports and training equipment, while the darker rooms contained hundreds of guns and weapons.
They were headed toward the biggest glass room of them all. He noticed every door had a different key panel. His escort punched into each panel three codes. The first two sets were the same as the ones he’d used upstairs, only all the numbers were multiplied by three. His last code was entirely different, but Paul made note of it, figuring out the pattern. Then the man swiped his access card through the panel. The doors opened again with an annoying clicking sound.
Paul walked in slowly, he felt like his heart was beating faster than a mouse’s. What more do they want with me? Paul didn’t want to die, but what else could he expect? He didn’t need Mr. Applegate to tell him what they did to the “others” who hacked into their bases. Paul knew all to well. The question was, what did they want with him now? He’d like to wish that he could just walk out of here. Maybe he would have tried to run if it weren’t for his fear that they’d go after his mom or Rebecca. You know if you would have ran, you never would have gotten very far. It’s better this way! Yet Paul’s mind raced with images of him running away with Rebecca, him being the strong hero keeping her safe, them growing old together, stopping the Biomax soldier that was created to take over everything.
A taller man approached them, walking up to them as if he was in a war and this was his battlefield. He was different than all the others in the way he dressed and walked. He wore old torn up jeans, a sleeveless shirt, and dog tags around his neck. His head was shaved, and his muscled arms were covered with what looked like old battle scars. Whether this man was a Biomax soldier or just a human soldier, he gave off the distinction that when it came to this area of the plant, he was in charge.
When Paul met his eyes he looked away, feeling as if the man might command him to do hundreds of pushups before he shot him. The man snickered, seeming to be able to read Paul’s mind and feeling all too high and mighty letting the boy know he was the top dog.
“So, kid, I hear you wanted to know all about the collection of Bios we have here, ” the man told him. Bio’s being short for Biomax soldiers, a title given to all people with altered super abilities. He turned to the escort. “Soldier 1054,” he snapped at him.
The escort didn’t respond, staying firmly planted where he stood, not moving a muscle. The two eyed each other, the crude one in charge staring at his soldier demanding respect, while the escort continued staring with a mocking face of revolt, like a child refusing nap time. The strangeness of the whole thing made more beads of sweat drip down Paul’s forehead, reaching his eyes, seeming almost like tears. Something was coming and Paul could feel it.
After about a minute and a half, the escort gave in grumpily, stepping up and facing Paul, giving off an “I have better things to do right now” vibe. Something about the look in the man’s eyes reminded Paul of something again. Why do I feel like I’ve met this person before?
“Stand down, 1054. Show our guest who you really are,” the leader commanded, daring Paul to watch as his escort or Soldier 1054, turned to him and closed his eyes. He was going into a trance suddenly.
What’s happening?
Then like a lizard, 1054’s skin started to change color, only slightly, and so gradually that it took Paul a full minute to realize it. Within another twenty seconds, his skin had turned from a light pale tone to a shimmering golden tan. At the same time, a noise, like a small humming at first, seemed to becoming from inside him. Every second the sound was getting clearer and clearer till it reached Paul’s ears as sounds of cracking and grinding, getting more and more sickening as it became apparent that the noise was from the twisting of 1054’s own bones.
“You wanted to know what our soldiers could do?” the man in charge taunted, but Paul could barely hear him nor turn his eyes away from 1054. He was sure now he knew what was happening in front of him. He’d read about this in one of the numerous coded files he’d hacked into and downloaded. Yet as many times as he’d imagined it, he never thought it could happen to a person like this and sound so painful. It was like staring at something horrible, but you couldn’t pull your eyes away.
Next, 1054’s face started to change; his pores growing smaller, his eye sockets moving closer together; and his lips bubbling up making themselves thicker and more attractively shaped. His head twisted rounder becoming smaller, tighter, and more youthful looking. His body started to catch up with his head a moment later, twisting and contorting. The sounds being made by the changes just kept getting worse and worse. 1054 grew shorter, and his body and hands got thinner. His suit was shrinking with him. His hair started to turn blond, and grow longer, making a curly mess spill out from around its face. 1054 no longer looked like nor had the body of a man. The face on it was still slowly moving, morphing, into the beginnings of a face Paul had seen five days a week for the past three years.
Paul’s stomach grew sick. It … Her … chest started to grow, bubbling in a similar fashion as her lips just had. Within about three minutes she had changed into the girl everyone in town seemed to know, the excruciating cracking and twisting dying down until they were a hum once again, finishing off with one last abrupt pop. Her eyes flipped open, her face becoming relaxed as if she hadn’t done anything strange or painful at all.
“Your wish has been granted,” the leader finished saying.
Paul hadn’t realized it but during this whole “mutation” he had been taking steps back away from the girl. He only knew it now, because suddenly his legs were hitting the glass wall behind him, forcing him to stay put. His glasses started to fall off him and he didn’t stop them; he let them fall right off his face, somehow catching them in his hands like a zombie.
There before him in a suit perfectly fitting now to her body was Lynn Eris, Soldier 1054, waiting for her next order.
* * *
Donna
Many times in life, people have dreams that make no sense whatsoever. Everything is backwards and unreal in them, yet until the person wakes up they just have to get through the dream no matter how scary it may be. That’s how Donna decided she was going to get through this. She’d just keep telling herself this was a dream. That in reality she was asleep in her bed, safe and sound, and all of her friends were really at home asleep too. So, like any other strange dream she was trapped in, she’d just get through it. She’d do what her dream mind wanted her to do, which was free Paul, and then if she got in over her head, she’d just wake up. After all, people can’t get hurt when they’re dreaming. They can’t get killed, and all the strangeness of the dream just fades when they wake up.
Yes, treat this how you’d treat a nightmare. Just get through it, don’t think about all the things that don’t make sense, she told herself through her panic, reasoning with herself to walk calmly as she approached the first line of wire fences. She’d run most of the way there through the open fields, but now cameras could be close, Rebecca had told her. So she had to act somewhat contained so she could at least get in.
Her shaky footsteps seemed to take forever until she was close enough to reach out and touch the fence. All at once all the panic thoughts and adrenalin she’d been holding back for the last few moments she let explode through her mind. TIME IS RUNNING OUT! Paul’s time is running out! She allowed her already tingly body, which had been yearning to turn all night, slip into her electric state. All the comfort of her molecules feeling like separate pieces jumping around and heating her up as her body grew incredibly light. She stepped through the first fence. Feeling it pass through her.
The moment she was through, she reached for the cold water bottle she had tossed over the fence a few yards away and let its coldness and precipitation return her to normal. She was still dressed in her disguise, thank go
odness. Not that she had time to think about it as she approached the stone wall up ahead.
Donna knelt her head down, already seeing the cameras pointed in different directions. She turned again, dropping her water bottle and leaving it in the grass. It was time now. There was no going back. She thought about everything that was happening, everything that was scaring her, letting her fear make her body so in need to be electric that as she passed through the wall, she felt all the electricity wired around the wall from the cameras pass into her, feeling like air seeping into her pores, giving her strength.
Then, after that last barrier, she raced over to the back of the power plant, diving into the wall without looking back.
* * *
Danny
Danny Corrs had come to East Applegate three months ago, transferring from a different government facility in Texas. He’d thought this job would be easy, a chance to prove himself after almost getting fired. Now he wished he’d drunk that coffee before he’d come in for this all nighter shift. He’d been nervous to start out with, because the head honcho, Mr. Applegate’s, surprise visit to the monitoring area. Seeing that poor kid Paul scared to death only four feet away from Danny had made him wish he’d just gotten a regular loan to pay for his schooling, instead of making the deal with the government to do this for the next five years of his life.
With all that on his mind, he’d overlooked screen 733a, one of the screens that monitored sections behind the power plant. He hadn’t seen the guy coming until the last second; an intruder who was tall with dreads. Danny hit the alarm, but before he could give a full report, he saw the most impossible thing. The intruder walked right through a wall. Or at least it looked like that. Then monitor 733a went black.
“What’s happening, Corrs?” one of his managers started shouting at him.
“I don’t know, sir, but we’re sending a team!” Whoever was here, they’d catch him.
God, he wished he hadn’t come in today.
Chapter Ten
Paul
What?” Paul started to ask in a shaky voice, trying to look into the leader’s snarling face with little success.
Lynn’s presence there was like a spooky reminder that something more terrible was coming.
“What do you want with me?” There, he’d asked it.
The leader looked like he wanted to scare Paul more, but glanced over at Lynn, who was giving him a very irritable look. He turned to Paul, seeming now like he wanted to get this over with so he could move on to scolding her. “What we’re going to do, kid, is see if that organ in your head is really worth all Applegate thinks it is.”
Paul touched his sticky hands to the wall, wishing they’d melt away. “You’re going to use me?”
“That’s the plan. You’ll be added to one of the—” he paused, looking over to Lynn, “—newer, less conditioned teams. Supposedly, the team that’s going to change it all.”
“You … ” Paul tried to breathe. “You want to make me a-a soldier?”
The leader laughed. “Ha, hardly. What difference could you ever make on the field? You’ll never be more than a hero outside your computer seat,” he spat, resentment hidden underneath every word he breathed. Paul just stared, pretending pathetically that the man was speaking some other language. He couldn’t really be giving Paul this fate.
“Come on, don’t you get it, am I not speaking English? You get to keep your scrawny life in exchange for doing what you would have done anyway, sitting down comfortably reading off computers and cracking codes, while soldiers like 1054 do all the fighting.”
“Mr.—” Paul stuttered, “Mr. Applegate said I had a choice.”
The leader sighed. “Do we have the wrong kid here? Is there another four-eyed dweeb waiting to be debriefed? This isn’t brain surgery; you take our generous offer, or become my soldier’s target practice and die, kid.” The leader was angry now, clearly he didn’t expect Paul to do much but shake and get on his knees and swear he’d do all he could in order to continue breathing.
“How—how long would I have to do this?” he asked desperately, searching his mind for any way out of this. Even if he pretended to be on their side, he’d have to help them at least in small ways. He couldn’t live with that. He knew too much about what their plan was in the end.
They’d hold his parents lives and probably even Rebecca’s over his head for the rest of his life. Maybe he should have run and not let them catch him. Maybe it would have been better if he had fled when he first learned of their existence instead of letting it get this far.
There’s no way out … I’m trapped … I’m …
A loud sound like a bomb seemed to explode in Paul’s ears. It sounded like a fire alarm or something, only much more detrimental. Little lights on the top of the doorways began to flash red like police lights, flashing to the rhythm of the alarm. Two other men, having the same look that the leader seemed to have, tall, bald, muscled, worn-out looking, and armed with guns, charged through the doors, walking quickly over to them.
“Code nine, sir,” one of the men told the leader, while his partner, not being able to help himself, glanced shyly over at Lynn’s beautiful figure. Lynn didn’t seem to notice, her face was wild with anticipation and readiness. She stood straight up now, staring at her leader, whom just a few seconds ago she seemed to despise; now she was ready and willing to take orders.
Yet the leader’s eyes never left Paul, holding him with mocking and disgust.
“Ready to find out how real these soldiers play?” he whispered. His attention on Paul was throwing Lynn into a vicious frenzy. “Keep him in here!” the leader commanded the man who had eyed Lynn. Then the three of them turned to leave, leaving Paul hostage again with another scary escort. But anything was better then what Paul had just had to hear.
* * *
Donna
Every year since Donna was in the fourth grade she’d been made to go on field trips to the power plant with all her classmates. It had always seemed to be the most important part of her little town besides the hospital. It was where all her classmates parents worked, and the biggest building around.
All in all, though, Donna had always thought it a boring place, a big white building where no music was ever played, and everyone was so serious and quiet, like a library. It had always had a lot of security, but Donna had never thought twice about that. After all, men handling machines and things that could make power and electricity, that did sound dangerous. Or at least it used to.
Every time she’d gone on a field trip there, they’d take the same small tour, the tour where you got to see all the different aspects of how the plant worked and was used. Donna and the kids would always ignore the boring guides and stare at the large maps on the walls showing all the houses the plant gave power to. As years went by, Donna would look at the map of her town, and other small towns it showed, and feel trapped, as if the map was of her personal prison. Maybe that’s why she’d never cared for this place. Maybe that explained why she might have, even in her deepest darkest dreams, feared it.
Now, she dove through the power plant’s back wall, her gymnast instincts causing her to do a front flip without thinking and then to push herself back up onto her feet. She wondered if the reason she’d always hated this big place was because, maybe, this was going to be the place where she was fated to die. Fortunately, time was going by too fast for her mind to think about it. Her body was fully electric and a little bright beyond transparency, enough that her features couldn’t be seen. She ran through the back room through the next wall that was in her way.
The only thing sensible to do, in her mind, was to keep running around like a human flashlight looking for Paul until she found him and then … Well she’d deal with the “then” when it came to that. Already it had begun to go wrong. The sound of the alarm and the red lights flashing scared her, sending her body pulsing like a heart. Her fear, going beyond what she needed to help her body turn, now had triggered the odd sight she sti
ll had yet to understand.
The hallway she was in had changed, becoming a big tunnel of black and blue with mounds of alive little electric lights bouncing around everywhere; so strong in this building they seemed to be singing to Donna, calling her electric body’s senses to join them. Making her feel like she was running through the opposing forces of a magnet.
All this was happening as the sound of running got closer and closer behind her. She ran from the sound, panicking that if her vision was like this, she wouldn’t be able to recognize Paul even if she found him. She pushed her mind with all her might, and as she ran through a third wall, her vision slammed back to normal. The sudden change made her stop abruptly and catch her balance.
This room she’d run into was filled with wires and cables and big machines. Three of its walls were solid but the fourth one was partly made of glass so people on the outside could look in. Already she recognized the big red and yellow words of the Do Not Enter signs posted in the window to stop people without lead suits from coming in. This was one of the rooms she’d walked by on the field trips, the room with the dangerous power machines. The people who she’d seen working in this room always had looked like space men to her because of all the safety equipment they had to wear. Oh Gosh … I’m really in here, aren’t I?
That was when she realized she wasn’t alone. Standing across from her were two very scared looking people in lead safety suits, staring at her like she was a monster. After about ten seconds, they were throwing their hands into the air. Oh God, not good. You have to keep moving, Donna! she told herself before realizing she couldn’t move. That it wasn’t her vision changing that had stopped her. Something strong in this room was holding her body in place like … like she was the magnet now.
She tried to turn her head, but it seemed to only want to face the big machine in the middle of the room. As she pleaded with herself to break free of what was holding her still, her vision changed back to her black and blue vision, making her see what her body was feeling. The big machine in the middle of the room was so full of live electricity that the little bouncing lights were bending and stretching like she’d never seen them move before. Out of their core was a rainbow of lights, making her and all the darkness of the black and blue room seem like death compared to them. She willed her vision back to normal as she had in the hallway; seeing the room like she’d just seen it was too much.
Shock Me Page 16